Stay on target

It’s about time The Gifted turned its flashback eye on Reeva Page. As one of the main antagonists of this season, we know shockingly little about her. She wasn’t always the ruthless advocate for a mutant-only society we know today. In her younger days, she was the moderate in her activist group. During a meeting to discuss the housing discrimination forcing mutants out of their neighborhood, she’s the one against forcing non-mutant families out of their homes. At this point in her life, she wants everyone to get along. We see the incident that changes her mind. As she argues with her friend, the leader of her group, a group of proto-Purifiers show up to further vandalize their building. It turns into a full-on assault, and when the mutants defend themselves, one of the men stabs her friend. Just like Magneto before her, Reeva has good reasons for doing what she does.

In the present, Reeva prepares for the hit on the bank, which turns out to be much harder on her than you’d think. The man she was texting turned out to be little more than a mark. A security expert working at the bank they want to hit. Using a combination of Frost manipulation and the age old tactic of threatening his children, she makes him into an accomplice. He goes into work like any other day, but shuts down the anti-mutant scanner. That allows the Inner Circle to gain access, take total control over the bank’s assets, and force the manager to reveal all the bank’s past crimes against mutants on video. All in all, a successful mission that goes off without a hitch. Until…

As cute as Andy’s budding romance with Rebecca was, he may have sold her a little too hard on the Inner Circle’s mission. As ruthless as Reeva can be, this is the first time we’ve seen her explicitly try to limit casualties. She wants a separate mutant nation, but there’s still a little bit of the person she used to be in her. She’s not out to slaughter non-mutants. She got what she came for, and that’s that. Rebecca disagrees. Set off by the manager’s comments that mutants should all be wiped out, she’s unsatisfied with Reeva’s plan to escape. She’s been subjected to some brutal torture driven by anti-mutant sentiments, and she’s out for revenge. As Reeva turns to leave, Rebecca turns everyone trapped inside the bank inside out, leaving a massive bloody smear on the wall.

One of the season’s big struggles has been selling the Inner Circle as actual villains. Especially with the much scarier, much more real threat of the Purifiers around. Now, we’re seeing how it might start to pay off. Because really, as extreme as the Inner Circle’s goals are, they’re perfectly understandable. You can see exactly where they’re coming from. Rebecca is different. She wants revenge more than anything, and she’s powerful enough to take it. Even Reeva might be in over her head here. It’s possible, like all good X-Men stories, the antagonists aren’t out and out villains. If Rebecca gets too far out of control, it might take both the Inner Circle and the Underground to contain her. That’s all speculation at this point, of course, but it’s a direction the season could go.

Jamie Chung and Sean Teale (Photo Credit: Jace Downs/FOX)

Meanwhile, both the Mutant Underground and Jace Turner are dealing with the aftermath of the Purifiers’ attack. At the Underground, Reed’s powers are still out of control, and it’s getting dangerous. Caitlin suggests moving him to the clinic the Purifiers attacked, where extra damage would go unnoticed, and she could maybe find a way to help him. With no other options, Eclipse and Thunderbird work to fortify an ambulance with scrap metal. It won’t hold forever, but they hope it lasts long enough to get him there. It does, but moving Reed isn’t even half the battle. Going through his father’s old files, they find the name of a doctor who may be able to help him. So they’ll have to transport him again next week.

Honestly, the Underground was the weakest story of the episode. It’s a whole bunch of arguments and emotional-sounding speeches that don’t go anywhere. Lauren wrestles with how much of the Von Struckers she sees in herself (the violent tendencies, not the nazism or incest, thankfully), but that internal struggle comes and goes without any real sense of purpose. Meanwhile, the rest of the Underground argues amongst themselves over how much they should trust the Morlocks. It’s really hard to root for the heroes when all they do is build a truck and fret about having too many allies.

Stephen Moyer (Photo Credit: Jace Downs/FOX)

Turner’s story is much more interesting, containing some actual conflict. After he led a raid that ended with one mutant dead, a prominent supporter of the Purifiers wants to meet with him. Someone who’s donated a lot of money to the cause. It turns out to be a TV personality who sees an opportunity in Turner. He has a story that can be used to make the Purifiers more sympathetic. Turner’s daughter is going to be used as anti-mutant propaganda. As a man trying to reconnect with his wife, who stopped talking to him because of his anti-mutant obsession, he’s not entirely comfortable with the idea. Especially when they ask him to sell out Sentinel Services. They want Turner to tell the public that Sentinel Services can’t do the job, and that the purifiers are the way forward.

It’s not hard to see who this man is a stand-in for. The Gifted is an X-Men show, after all. It’s not going to pass up an opportunity to comment on real world politics. The commentary becomes almost painfully obvious after Turner refuses to betray the people he served with. The TV personality tries to impress him with his power. “I’ve got a direct line to the president,” he says. Hmmm, what conservative TV personality do we know of who reportedly regularly talks to the President of the United States on the phone? Who has contributed to spreading and normalizing a racist agenda… Yeah, it’s on the nose, but I love it when The Gifted does stuff like this. It’s a reminder that the writers know exactly what kind of story they’re telling. And with this subject matter, they’re able to take the metaphor further than pretty much any other show on TV right now. And all without any lines about making anything great again.

Turner soon finds himself pressured into doing the TV appearance anyway. He may have had reservations about joining a hate group, but whether he likes it or not, he’s fully in one now. No amount of conflicted brooding looks are going to change that. He might be a bit less conflicted now though. As the episode ends, he hears about the Inner Circle’s attack at the bank. We’ve already seen that Turner’s not one for nuance. It doesn’t matter to him that the Mutant Underground and the Inner Circle are two opposing factions. To him, mutants committed the attack, therefore all mutants are guilty. He uses one group’s attack to paint an entire race with the same broad brush. This is how fascism works. I just wish The Gifted didn’t look so much like the news that comes on an hour later.